There is a new video for Arcade Fire’s ‘Afterlife’, and it’s a real one this time, not a re-soundtracked classic movie footage, but rather a video directed live by Spike Jonze during Sunday night’s YouTube Music Awards,… wait, YouTube has awards now?
Thanks to the gods of voodoo, the band has abandoned the papier-mâché giant heads, the Haitian culture as well as the exotic locations have even disappeared from sight, and once again the band is almost invisible the whole time just making an apparition at the end. But instead of Win and Régine, we have Greta Gerwing dancing, or whatever you want to call her agitated and nervous moves, let’s just say it’s a bit weird and on the excited side, but she seems to greatly enjoy it. She is then joined by a troupe of jumping-running little girls, then the band, and all this is very joyous despite the darkness – the video seems to be shot in a very dark forest – all this is very festive despite the lack of exotic cultural artifacts and graffiti, despite the presence of a colorful black country to reinvigorate their white ennui.
But back to the song itself, it’s a great one on the album, which is actually totally growing on me. ‘Afterlife’ is one of my favorites with ‘Here Comes the Night Time’, ‘Normal Person’, ‘Joan of Arc’ and of course ‘Reflektor’. I guess this darkness in the video is totally appropriate, Arcade Fire has followed the light/darkness dual theme since ‘Funeral’ and it comes back in ‘Reflektor’, except that the light is viewed through Greek mythology and reflected in every direction on the multi-mirror-facets of a disco ball. Is ‘Afterlife’ asking the essential question and giving the answer? ‘Afterlife, I think I saw what happens next’ or not giving any answer at all? ‘It was just a glimpse of you/Like looking through a window’. These reflector-reflections are probably just delusions but the question is ‘when love is gone/where does it go?’ Gerwing/Eurydice leaves her Orpheus at the beginning of the video to find Arcade Fire vibrating in white silver light. ‘Is this the afterlife?’ At the end she may be Eurydice descending in the underworld or just a girl having fun after a breakup.